Crabapple Pecan Meringue Tart

The obvious thing to do when you are on tap for pies and dinner rolls at Thanksgiving, AND your brother is going to be staying with you for the holiday, AND you need to clean so that he has a place to sleep, is to make one of the pies more complicated.  Ordinarily crabapple pecan tart is topped with unsweetened coconut.  But I forgot to get unsweetened coconut.  So upon reflection I decided that meringue would be an interesting counterpoint to the tartness of the pie.

Sharing this recipe is sheer self-indulgence.  Most people don't make crabapple sauce, but they are one of the few fruit trees that fare well in Alaska, and Bird regularly mails me frozen bricks of it.  You should be so lucky.  If you are not on Bird's crabapple sauce mailing list, here is how you can make your own crabapple sauce.

Crabapple Sauce

1 or more plastic Safeway bags  of crabapples (the bigger kind that actually have some fruit, not the kind that are pretty pink skin wrapped around seeds) scavenged from the crab apple trees of friends
Sugar to taste (but not too much) (1/3 -1/2 cup usually)
1 food mill
brandy (optional)
1 cup size freezer containers

Wash your crab apples

With a sharp paring knife (you can use a dull one if you must, but it's kind of annoying), remove the stems and that weird woody nodule on the bottom of the crabapples.  This is best done with a friend, as this step can go on for kind of a long time, and if you have a friend there, then you have someone to talk to.  Ooo and aaa at the luminous pinkness of the little fruit. Toss the stemmed crabapples into a large stockpot.

When the pot is a third or so full, add enough water to come up about halfway up the crabapples.  Place over medium heat, cover, and bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer, slosh in a little brandy if you feel like it.  Meanwhile stem more crabapples.

When the crabapples are mooshy and a bit exploded, run them through a food mill until the skins and seeds are all that is left in the mill basket, and you have a bowl of brilliantly pink crabapple sauce.  Add 1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar, and spoon into the freezer containers and allow to cool.  While you are doing this, your sidekick can prep the next batch.

Bricks of crabapple sauce keep brilliantly in the freezer.  With a bit more sugar and some pectin, it also makes rather nice freezer jam.

Crabapple Pecan Tart with Optional Meringue Topping

I made up this recipe for Bird sometime after our first venture into crabapple sauce making when we realized that Bird's freezer was full of crabapple sauce and we didn't know quite what to do with it.  I was reading my Gourmet Cookbook and found this recipe for a cranberry walnut tart.  A lightbulb went off and the rest, as they say, was history.

Piecrust sufficient for a single crust pie (homemade if you are ambitious, store bought if you are incompetent or feel that life is too short)
4 large egg yolks (or three eggs if you are not making meringue)
2/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/4 cup butter (1/2 stick) melted and cooled (apparently optional, as I forgot my melted butter in the microwave and people still raved about the tart)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup crabapple sauce (thawed if you are using a frozen brick)
1 cup chopped pecans
unsweetened shredded coconut if you don't feel like fussing with meringue
or
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon sugar
1/3 cup water
4 egg whites at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon cream of tarter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup white sugar, preferably superfine

Place crust in a pie plate or tart pan.  Preheat ovn to 425. Lightly prick crust in several places with a fork.  Line crust with foil and place pie weights, raw rice, or dried beans inside.  Bake until edges are golden, about 15 minutes.  Carefully remove foil and weights ad bake crust until pale golden all over, 5-10 minutes more.  Cool.  Reduce oven temperatureto 350.

Whisk together eggs, brown sugar, butter, salt, vanilla, and crabapple saucein a medium bowl until smooth.  Stir in nuts.

Pour filling into crust.  Bake for 25 minutes.

While the tart is baking make the meringue.  I used a recipe that I got from Joy of Cooking, for a meringue stabilized with cornstarch, as it stands up well to refrigeration.

In a small saucepan thoroughly mix the corn starch and 1 tablespoon of sugar.  Gradually stir in the water, making a smooth runny paste.  Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring briskly all the while.  Boil for 15 seconds.  It will form a thick, viscid, translucent paste.  Remove from the heat, cover and set it aside.

In a clean, grease free bowl , beat the egg whites on medium speed until foamy.

Add the vanilla and cream of tartar and beat until soft but definite peaks form.  Very gradually beat in the 1/2 cup of sugar.

Beat at high speed until the peals are very stiff and glossy, but not dry.  Reduce the speed to very low and beat in the cornstarch paste one tablespoon at a time.  When all the paste is incorporated, increase the speed to medium and beat for ten seconds.  If you timed things right, the timer is about to go off.

Remove the tart from the oven and spoon the meringue over the top of the still hot pie, being sure to start by spooning a ring around the edge of the crust to anchor the meringue and keep it from shrinking away from the edges, then mound the remaining meringue in the middle.

Return the pie to the oven for another twenty-five minutes, or until the meringue is golden.

If you are not messing with meringue, at the twenty-five minute mark sprinkle the top of the pie liberally with the unsweetened coconut, and either employ a ring of foil or a pie shield to keep the crust from overbrowning. Cook for another twenty to twenty-five minutes.  The coconut should be nicely tanned.

Either way allow to cool before serving.

Behind again

In case anyone is wondering, 20 credits is a course load for lunatics.  My brain is like unto an orange after it has been juiced -- somewhat flattened and kind of oozy.  Despite this, or perhaps because of this, I have been cooking.  Cooking rather a lot. Other domestic tasks not so much.  My apartment has definitely assumed the mid-quarter chaos, that signals that it is the abode of a very tired person who does little more than cook, sleep, read, and sometimes water the plants.  But as I mention I have been cooking.  In order to get caught up on food based blogging I need to give the recipes for Black Forest cheesecake brownies, squash and bacon pasta al forno, the latest iteration of orange vegetable coconut soup -- NOW with extra legumes, as well as discussing the perils and delights of sour dough starter, venison meatballs, and the Greek place over in Queen Ann that is now my favorite Greek place.  I'll start with the brownies, widely acclaimed as the best brownies ever (okay, only Carolus Calvus described them thus) but they are pretty darn good.

The brownies in question were my solution to the problem of wanting a birthday cake, and being the only person around who would bake one (Okay, Jackie volunteered, but she doesn't actually like cake, and I didn't feel like a big party this year, so it seemed a bit unfair). Mom always makes me an Italian Cream Cake, which as far as I know has nothing to do with Italy but rather has a lot to do with pecans and coconut (the recipe seems to originate in the American South).  But in the absence of Mom, I opted for something that was nothing like what she makes me.

Black Forest Cheese Cake Brownies

Notes: The brownie layer is actually just a doubling of my favorite brownie recipe.  It's gooey.  Very gooey.  For reasons that I have yet to understand, if you bake these brownies in a glass dish, you will end up with a dish of delectable brownies that refuse to leave their pan neatly, no matter how you butter and flour the pan.  If you bake them in a greased metal pan, no problem. Unfortunately I was making a 9"x13" pan to share with my classmates, and the only pan that size I own is pyrex.  Fortunately taste made up for inelegant presentation.  If you just want a truly excellent fudgy brownie, halve the recipe and bake it in an 8"x8" baking pan, or a nine inch metal pie plate, if that's all that's clean.

Brownie Layer
2 sticks of butter (low fat is only one of the minor virtues, especially if you spend a lot of time walking around in Seattle's winter weather -- icy cold downpours, alternating with wind and icy cold sideways rain)
4 ounces of unsweetened baking chocolate finely chopped
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt


Cheese Cake Layer
16 ounces cream cheese, well softened and cut into chunks (I usually microwave it to goo, but other people choose to do things differently.)
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon lemon zest, if you happen to have it on hand

1 or possibly 1 1/2 cans of cherry pie filling.

Grease and flour a 9"x13" pan. Preheat the oven to 325.

In a large heavy bottomed sauce pan, melt the chocolate and butter over medium low heat, stirring to make sure it doesn't burn.  When everything is nearly melted, turn off the stove and let it coast until all of the chocolate and butter is in fact melted.

Add everything else, stirring until well combined.  One of the reasons I like this brownie recipe? It's really easy, even if you're really tired.

Scrape the brownie batter into the pan, and bake for twenty minutes.

Meanwhile combine everything else except the cherry pie filling, and mix until smooth.

When the brownies come out of the oven, scrape the cheese cake layer on top of the brownie layer and bake in the oven for 35 minutes or so, or until the cheesecake layer is just tinged with brown and beginning to crack on top. and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean of cheesecake, but with a few brownie crumbs.

Allow the cheesecake to cool for twenty minutes then top with the cherry pie filling.  Pop everything in the fridge and serve the next day to general acclaim.


 

Cookies

Said to Jackie this evening on the phone, "These cookies are really good.  Unfortunately, that means I need to remember what I did so I can blog it."  With that in mind, I offer recipes for the two kinds of oatmeal and STUFF cookies I am making at the moment.

Regular People Cookies
1/2 pound (or two sticks) of butter, softened
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup of granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 Tablespoon vanilla
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon salt (unless you use salted butter)
1/2 cup wheat or oat bran
2 1/2 cups oat meal
1 cup dried cherries, cranberries, or raisins
1 skimpy cup chocolate chips
1 cup walnut halves chopped

Preheat oven 350.

Combine ingrediants in order, mixing well after each addition.  An electric mixer is best, unless you have biceps to rival my brothers. 

Drop by teaspoon fulls on ungreased cookie sheets.  Bake for ten minutes, or until golden around the edges.


Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies of the Revolution

1/2 pound (or two sticks) of butter, softened
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup of granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons of brandy
2 teaspoons espresso powder (no, 2 teaspoons of really strong coffee will not work, it will just make you long for the coffee taste that you feel ought to be there)
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon salt (unless you use salted butter)
3 cups oat meal
1 cup dried cherries, cranberries, or raisins
1 skimpy cup chocolate chips
1 heaping cup walnut halves chopped

Proceed as above.  These recipes are after all closely related.


Other than that I can say that zucchini, onions, garlic, walnuts and spinach sauteed in bacon fat is my family's new favorite vegetable experience. Especially with cod baked after being sloshed with olive oil, lemon juice, and sprinkled with dill, pepper, and gorgonzola.

The bacon fat was leftover from the bacon wrapped dates I wrote about last week.  I really ought to write up a recipe, or rather get JVW to tell me what she does, since she is the official bacon wrapped date maker.  Bacon wrapped dates are splendid, and make a fantastic portable breakfast.

I Am Lazarus Back from the Dead...

Or at least Sarah back from the end of the quarter, and I'm back to start blogging again.  Much as I would like to say that I am moved by pure love of self expression, I will cop to actually being moved by the plaints of my reading public (such as it is).  Now that I am no longer putting sixty hour weeks in the studio, but am instead seeking summer employment (that does not involve me standing on concrete for hours straight*) and putting up a portfolio online, I have time to bend my ear to their requests.

Tonight there is experimental curry on the stove.  Well not terribly experimental, except for the apple I threw in on a whim.  Apple?

I keep forgetting that Gala apples are not my idea of pomaceous delight.  Not even close.  They may be almost the same color as Braeburns and Fujis, but they lack the snap and crispness that makes them favorites, and they cook poorly.  Under those circumstances the apples become some sort of sweet secondary vegetable, and thus into a curry that is already going to play host to cauliflower, an onion, garlic, and a tomato (as well as lentils and rice and some left over chicken). 

But that's not why I'm writing this.  I am writing this because I made gluten free, dairy free brownies that weren't entirely awful AND DID NOT REQUIRE ME TO BUY XANTHAN GUM.  Also the texture wasn't bad.**

Black Bean Brownies

One 15-ounce can black beans, drained and rinsed very well, preferably a brand that does not add onions to their black beans.  Alternatively one could make ones own black beans.  This one did not feel so moved.  Nor did she want to go buy new black beans after she opened the can and then realized that they had onions. So she ended up rinsing her black beans many times over and speaking of her actions in the third person. Even so, not too bad.
3 large eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil or more.  Next time I'm considering upping the oil. 
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon if you feel like it.  Or are trying to cover the taste of oniony beans. 
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup walnuts chopped

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease an 8"x 8" square baking pan, or a 9" round pan.  (Any guesses as to which I was using?)

 In a blender puree the beans with the eggs and vanilla extract until creamy. Then puree them a bit more.

In a large bowl mix together the dry ingredients (sugar, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder, cinnamon).

Carefully fold the bean and egg mixture into the dry ingredients, then mix until totally incorporated.

Stir in the walnuts and chocolate chips, and scrape into the prepared pan.

Bake until only a couple of crumbs cling to a tester.  I started checking at 30 minutes, but the brownies came out at 40 minutes.

If you have the time, these definitely benefit from aging over night. 


* I have a most unholy love of working retail (I pretty much hate recreational shopping).  I like meeting people.  I like talking about things I enjoy.  I like selling people things that will make their lives better (for sometimes very abstract values of better).  I'm even good at it. My feet however have issued an ultimatum about me and standing on concrete floors for hours a day.  Since my feet are an integral part of my active and exciting lifestyle, I perforce must accept that sometimes desks are okay too. 

**I have a couple of people in my life who need things to be gluten free and dairy free (this pretty much rules out chocolate mousse, since I'm allergic to soy based dairy substitutes; likewise tortes that substitute chopped nuts for flour were likewise out, because I hate chopping all those nuts by hand). I prefer to be able to accommodate them.  Preferably with things that are acceptable to not so restricted eaters. Texture is the area where gluten free desserts often fall down.  So when I find something that works for everyone I get all excited.

Still Haven't Been Devoured by Raptors

I'm still behind on my blogging.  Oh well, I am at least sort of caught up on my school work.  Somehow these two states go hand in hand.  I consider this regrettable.  I'm beginning to feel like I might have enough stuff for an online design portfolio, so I'll be working that out soonish.  Heavy on the -ish. 

Meanwhile I have been eating and sometimes cooking.  I bring these insights therefore to the table.

1. The Culinary Arts program at Seattle Central is run by a bunch of maniacs out to convert the world to a bizarre cult of deliciousness and pastry cream and really cheap slices of amazing cake.  On Friday my friend A and I stopped in at the coffee stand and satellite chapel of the CA and came away with one goat cheese, onion, and proscuitto pizza-ish baked good, two shrimp and rice salads, and two cream puffs, an almond croissant, and a slice of Seville cake*.  All of it verged on the transcendantly good, and the Seville cake achieved apotheosis, despite getting melty in the sun. 

2. I am baking brioche this afternoon.  I have always wanted to try my hand at it, but have not always had a stand mixer at my disposal.  Today it occurred to me that I have a stand mixer, all the ingredients, and TIME, which as my posting rate will show, has been at a premium lately. 

Or rather I claim to be making brioche, because I did not actually read the recipe all the way through before embarking.  As everyone knows, this is one of the classic blunders:  land wars in Asia.  Going up against a Sicillian when DEATH is on the line.  Frying bacon shirtless.  And not reading the recipe all the way through.  Turns out I will not be baking brioche today, because it needs a minimum of 12 hours to rise slowly and elegantly in the fridge.  I am however eagerly anticipating the results of all of my patience. 

Brioche dough is extraordinarily elastic and tastes sort of like slightly yeasty cake batter, probably because of all the butter and eggs.  As I was scraping the brioche dough into the bowl it will rise in, I couldn't help that think that a) it moved like an alien life form, and b) there ought to be a use for something this strange in the aerospace industry. 

3. Kale continues to be my favorite leafy green,  Closely followed by butter crunch lettuce.  I really like lettuce.  This goes back to a trip to Ireland as a teenager.  During the three weeks I was there, almost the only vegetables that appeared edible were the lettuce and the chips.  So lettuce not only tastes good, but also carries this nostalgic thrill harkening back to the first time I left the country by myself.

I should say that I have since returned to Ireland and eaten some truly excellent meals.  I remember with particular fondness the vegetarian buffet at Govinda's.  I had no idea what I was eating, but I knew it was delicious. 

4. I have currently decided that the best way to cook a game hen is to rub a mixture of butter, herbs, and a pinch dried mustard under its skin, stuff it with a few apple slices, and cook it in a casserole with more apples, kale, and garlic.  350 for an hour and a half, serve it with rice and make your friends, even the gluten intolerant friends happy. 

5. Snoqualmie Ice Cream is the best ice cream for sale at QFC.  Especially the coconut.  Especially the honey cinnamon custard.  No, I can't decide which is better. Molly Moon's may be better (and I'm not even sure about that), but Snoqualmie is cheaper.

*What the heck is Seville Cake, you ask?  In this case it was a cake largely composed of dark chocolate mousse,  on a substrate of chocolate sponge cake, with an intervening layer of custard flavored with marmalade.  Just the description makes me want to drool on the keyboard.

Winter Is Over and Past!

I woke up this morning and I wanted out.  Birds were singing and delicious smells of earth and flowers were coming in my window.  Two of my cousins are in Everett this weekend instead of Palo Alto and Iowa, so I had planned on going up north shortly after breakfast.  Which is fine.  But I've spent many of my last several weekends being social and I wanted some time to be me... in silence.  Fortuitously, my aunt called and said everyone was moving slowly, so maybe we could meet up before dinner?

Suited me fine.  I went and washed my hair and took out the recycling and then I went for a walk.  For a couple of hours I walked over north Cap Hill taking pictures (and figuring out the rudimentary manual controls on my camera) and breathing.  Volunteer park was filled with families.  The koi in the koi ponds looked particularly handsome. The reservoir glowed deep teal.  The crows were raucous in their delight with the day, and I kept fighting the urge to write Anglo-Magic-Realist short stories in the mode of A.S. Byatt-- all about a woman who lives in a city by an inland sea and communes with the wise fish who hear all the secrets of lovers who sit by their pond.  (If I develop an actual plot rather than a handful of images I may yet follow through.)  Anyway, everything seemed alive and suffused with joy and intelligence. 

On my way home I stopped at the grocery store and bought a pound of rhubarb for to make a something or other to augment the raspberry cheese cake brownies (recipe coming later, if I think it's worth while) I made last night, before I remembered that one of my cousins has given up chocolate for Lent.  I had been thinking idly of rhubarb upside down cake, but I didn't have enough butter.  Ditto the rhubarb crisp idea.  Eventually I settled on a rhubarb custard.  Except no where could I find a recipe for what I wanted.  At least, not under that name. 

Eventually I adapted a recipe for rice pudding of all the peculiar things, and I offer it here to you all.

Rhubarb Custard

4 cups of chopped rhubarb.  This is somewhat less than a pound, but extra rhubarb has never been a problem for me.
1 1/2 cup whole milk
2/3 cup + 1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp muscato (it's a light sweet white wine, which could probably be omitted, but I had it so I used it)
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease a souffle dish (I would suggest an 8"x8" baking dish or 9" deep pie plate, but all I had that did not already have baked goods in it was the aforementioned souffle dish), and toss in the rhubarb.  Toss the rhubarb with 1 Tbsp sugar and the moscato.  Set aside.

In a heavy bottomed sauce pan bring the milk to a simmer.

While you are waiting on the milk, whisk together the rest of the sugar, , the eggs, the vanilla, the cinnamon and the salt. If the milk simmers while all this whisking is going on, remove it from the heat.

Gradually add the hot milk to the egg mixture while stirring continuously.

Pour over the custard and bake at 350 until puffed and golden and set.  Details on the timing of this when it comes out of the oven.  I went to about an hour and ten minutes, before allowing it to continue cooking in the oven with the heat off. 

I used more moscato than what I outline above, and it was too much.  Between the extraneous moscato and the liquid the rhubarb is throwing off, there is too much liquid in the dish.  The smell is intoxicating, but the evidence suggests that the texture may be less than perfect. Some of this trouble could have been avoided by baking the custard in a shallower dish with more surface area, and placing it in a water bath. 

On further exploration most people will probably want more sugar than I used, and possibly less rhubarb.  Next time.  For there is going to definitely be a next time. 

Inventing things again

I used to say that I did NOT bake.  Baking was too fussy for a tomboy like me.  I liked the rough alchemy of a sauté coming together, or a soup long simmered, until cheap meat, and slightly dodgy vegetables became a dish to astound my friends.   And then there were the notable failures, but about those best to keep quiet. 

Baking, by contrast, was predictable, lacking in adventure.  All those finicking chemical reactions to bake a cake that worked.  No room for experimentation.

But eventually my love of the kitchen led me to learn, apprehensively at first, the rudiments of baking.  I'm by no means a master baker, whatever this blog might lead one to believe, but I do what I know well.  And eventually, I mastered enough of the basics to do what I did tonight -- open my faithful Joy of Cooking to a simple quick cake recipe (that is a cake that relies on a chemical reaction between an acid and a base for it to rise rather than a cake that relies, at least in part, on incorporating air into eggs for structure) -- realize that I don't have enough sour cream to make it, and improvise.

The improvisation is in the oven at the moment, but here is the recipe.  In general for baked goods I prefer not to rely on regular coffee to impart a coffee flavor -- coffee is bizarrely one of the more evanescent flavoring -- but a half cup seems like it ought to do something.  

This cake comes together fast, and can be mixed with a wooden spoon without undue laboriousness.  I also suppose that some people would call this a tea loaf rather than a cake and I will admit their point.

Hopeful Mocha Quick Cake

5 Tbsp Butter
2/3 c brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 c sour cream
1/2 c strong coffee
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 c flour
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350.

Grease and flour a 9"x 5" loaf pan

Melt the butter in a large microwave safe mixing bowl.

Stir in the rest of the ingredients in the order in which they are listed, stirring between each addition. Stir until the dry ingrediants are just combined, and the chips are well distributed.

Scrap into the loaf pan and bake for 40 - 45 minutes, or until a tooth pick or fork inserted into the center comes out clean.  Let cool in the pan on a rack for 20 minutes or so, and then run a fork around the cake to loosen it and turn it out. 

Edit to add: I baked this as described in a loaf pan, took forever.  I suggest a nine or ten inch cake pan and start checking around the 30 minute mark.

Peanut Butter Cream Cheese cookies

I was suddenly seized by a twelve year old memory of the peanut butter pie at the Glacier Brew House.  I believe I have only eaten it once and it was so rich I could not finish it.  Suddenly I had to duplicate the experience of the tangy peanut butter cheese cake  swathed in ganache ... in a cookie? 

I don't know why my brain seized on a cookie as the appropriate medium for conveying the experience.  There are recipes for peanut butter pies.  There are no recipes that I could find for peanut butter cream cheese cookies.  I know, I spent a couple of weeks looking.

This afternoon I went and bought cream cheese (and more peanut butter, I was running out).  I forgot to buy chocolate for melting and dipping the cookies in.  I may go back and rectify that, but only after I bake the cookies and find out how they are.  The dough is currently chiling in the fridge.

Experimental Peanut Butter Cookies

3/4 c cream cheese, room temperature -- not the spreadable kind in the tub, they add oil to make it spread.
3/4 c creamy peanut butter, room temperature
1 c sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder

Beat cream cheese, peanut butter, sugar, vanilla and the egg together, until lightened in color, two or three minutes.

Add dry ingredients, and beat on low speed until just combined. 

Cover and chill in fridge freezer (after an hour in the fridge the dough was insufficiently solid)for a couple of hours.

Preheat oven to 350.

Roll heaping tea spoon fulls of dough into balls.  This will be sticky but possibly less so if you keep your hands damp.  Place on cookie sheets, flattening to around 1/2" thick. 

Bake for 10 - 12 minutes until puffed and golden brown.

Or something like that.  As previously mentioned, I'm only at the chilling the dough phase now.  I will be editing with the results this evening.  The dough tastes like Reese's Pieces.

Edit: These turn out to be rather... inoffensive.  Peanut buttery, but not overwhelmingly so.  Nice texture.  But they need something.  So for the next round, I've put dark chocolate chips on top of the cookies on the theory that the chips might melt and and spread into a nice topping.  If that doesn't work, I may have ganache based frosting in my future.  Which would be okay, and truer to my memory of the peanut butter pie.   To be continued...

Edit again:  I never did get around to dipping the cookies in chocolate, because they got eaten.  The cookie victims, my design classmates were universal in their approbation, so these will probably get made again after all.  

Finally the Banana Upside Down Cake

Today has been a day of thwarting.  I wish I could say that I was off thwarting the powers of evil and corruption and mundane unpleasantness.  Alas, instead I was being thwarted by the powers of the laundry room.  I have a hate hate relationship with the little machine that sucks my cash into it's depths and theoretically puts money on a card that can then be used to pay for my laundry.  Theoretically.  Usually it just refuses to acknowledge that I have put a correctly formatted card into the appropriate slot.

In an excess of despair -- for clean socks are a basic human need -- I stomped off and decided to bake another banana upside down cake to address the imbalance of pleasant things in my personal universe.

Since I had leftover fresh ginger from last night's ginger ale experiment (it appears to be fermenting right along nicely), I decided that since bananas and ginger are both tropical crops they obviously went together.  I also had some pineapple orange juice which I dumped on the topping in the hopes that the extra liquid would make for a less impermeable layer of caramel.

So this is what I did this time.  (Except for the things that I know I did wrong, which I will not tell you to do.)

Banana Ginger Upside Down Cake

 I bake upside down cakes in a ten inch cast iron skillet.  I understand that there are different approaches, but that's what I do. 

Topping
1/4 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup well packed brown sugar
1 or 2 sliced bananas depending on size
3 Tbsp orange pineapple juice or orange juice or pineapple juice

Cake
 1/3 cup Crisco shortening -- I don't know why Crisco and not butter, but I theorize that because this recipe contains so much liquid already, that the person who invented the recipe I've messed with substantially wanted a fat with less water in it than butter has.  Anyway, I liked the idea of a smidge less cholesterol in the dessert
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2)
A peeled and chopped 1"x 2" chunk of fresh ginger
1/2 cup buttermilk*
1 1/2 Tbsp vanilla extract (or less, but in my thwarted state I was feeling decadent)


 
Preheat the oven to 350.

Over low heat, melt the butter in your skillet.

Attempt to sprinkle the brown sugar evenly over the surface of the butter.  This will probably fail, I have never known well packed brown sugar to sprinkle readily.  That's okay, grab a wooden spoon and smooth it out.  Allow to cook unmolested for 3 minutes.

Remove the skillet from the heat, and arrange the bananas over the face of the caramel.  Be careful, the bubbly brown stuff is hot and irascible.  Cover the surface as well as you can without overlapping the banana slices

Cream the Crisco and the sugars together, beating until light and fluffy in texture. This takes a few minutes.  (I use my stand mixer, and mix up the dry mixture and the wet mixture while creaming and beating in eggs is going on.)


Add two eggs, beating well after each.




In a 2 cup pyrex measuring cup (you can use other things -- but this is the perfect size) mix the buttermilk, the  bananas, the vanilla, and the chopped up ginger.  Take your immersion blender and puree.  (One could of course mash the bananas by hand and grate the ginger, but this is nice and easy.)

In a medium size bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  

Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture in three parts alternating with the banana mixture.  Mix until just combined, and scrap into the skillet, trying not to disarrange the bananas too much.  Smooth out the cake batter, and pop into the oven.

Bake 40-50 minutes, or until golden and a tester comes out clean.

Allow to cool in skillet for fifteen minutes, before running a knife around the cake.  Placing a plate of suitable size face down over the top and invert.  Hopefully the cake will end up on the plate and not the floor. 

*  One can -- and this one does-- make a buttermilk substitute (or use 1/2 cup of plain yogurt). 
1/2Tspp (or 1 1/2 teaspoons) vinegar
enough milk to then make half a cup when combined with the vinegar
Leave it alone for five minutes and then stir.

Severely Miscellaneous

Franz Kine, Painting Number 2

 This appears to be the sort of blog post where I end up quoting dead white guys and philosophizing.  You probably ought to practice your omelet making technique instead. 

It has not been a week wherein I felt like writing about food.  I do need to write up and post the banana upside down cake recipe.  I think I need to tweak a couple of things first though.   Unfortunately I'm short on excuses to make a banana cake at the moment.  So, by way of apology, have a link to a recipe for a plum upside down cake.  I have never made it (and if I did, I would probably make one cake rather than individual ramekin cakes), but it looks delicious.  I'm mad for upside down cakes and have been for years.  Last year I started experimenting with not-pineapple cakes and so far my favorite is rhubarb -- although wild blueberry comes a close second.  Which reminds me that I have seen new rhubarb shoots coming up in gardens around Cap Hill.  This climate!  I live in the tropics!

I spent most of last week in a sleep deprived fog, because the occult operations of my hind brain decreed it to be a week of not sleeping.  That meant a lot of things out of boxes for meals (including a moment of weakness that saddled me with a box of breaded fish filets: a trial served to prove that growing up in Alaska has probably ruined Van De Camps for me for life*).  There was one problematic exception, a pot of squash soup.  I left it out on the counter overnight.  I blame the bad sleep brain fog.

Unfortunately I love squash soup the way many people love chocolate -- not wisely, but too well.    I find it irresistible, especially when made with homemade chicken stock (which this is).  So after some internal struggle, I decided not to pitch it.  Tonight I heated it to a rolling boil for twenty minutes and am now eating it.  Hopefully I won't wake up puking tonight.  If I do, it's all because of love.** 

None of this was really what I was thinking about when I began this post.  Perhaps you're wondering about that spare painting that heads off this blog entry.  I am too.  Franz Kline always resisted the comparison of his work to Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, but I find the parallel hard to resist.  To some degree, a work of art exists between the intention of its creator and the understanding of its viewer.  Despite Kline's protests, I cannot help seeing his austere black and white compositions as the calligraphy of his soul.  Of course, it is in a language I don't speak. Do we remain largely unintelligible to each other?  If the calligraphy of my soul were written, it would have more colors and maybe some gold and silver leaf, but the meanings would be equally obscure.

However even as I was thinking these isolated thoughts,  I was walking home carrying a rather large and heavy care package from Alaska.  This tangible burden of love did not feel like the product of a careful truce and years of fraught translation even if there were occasional moments of incomprehension in the friendship.  I walked on.  I considered turning the mute calligraphic image of the soul into poetry to send off to another friend, one more email in a friendship that has been almost entirely conducted by email for six years.***  This friendship ought to feel more tenuous than it does.  Thousands of words arguing about books and critiquing each other's writing creates a density and heft to a relationship that inspires confidence.   If my soul's calligraphy could be translated, those two friends (with the help of a few others) have a better than average chance of producing a useful lexicon.  Likewise, I flatter myself that I could contribute a word or two to their own dictionaries.  It's both comforting and discomfiting to be so well known. -- decidedly more the former than the latter.  Although at times more privacy to dissemble seems a luxury,  these friends who read me so well can do so because they love me.  There is an alarming sort of safety in that. 

Maddeningly John Donne appears to have got here before me in Meditation XVII from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.****  Or at least he anticipated my conceit of the soul as a book in some strange language. 

...all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.

Or possibly, because it's an image I love, I subconsciously remembered it when confronted with Kline's expressive yet unspeaking austerity.  John Donne's measured words incorporated into the calligraphy of my soul (if I am going to insist on the metaphor). 

Meanwhile, although I am not throwing up, there is some internal unrest that suggests that the best course of action is pitching out the rest of the soup and fetching some ginger ale.  Alas.  (With the caveat that boiling the soup resulted in some significant scorching, rendering it less delightsome than it might otherwise be.) 

*What's even weirder?  I claim not to like fish with some very carefully circumscribed exceptions (which mostly involve smoked salmon† or fried rock fish).  I have no idea why the frozen fish fillets suddenly seemed like a good idea, except that it was on sale and I'm temporarily sick of eggs as my primary protein source. 

**A survey of world literature clearly demonstrates that love is at the bottom of many a plot complication.  

***What wouldn't I give to have all the people who matter within fifty miles of me?

**** Despite various misinformed web based idiocies this is neither a poem nor in Old English††.  It's definitely prose, and the language while archaic is distinctly Modern English (Early Modern English if you want to nitpick).  I'm even using a text with regularized and modernized spelling.

†I get alarmingly enthusiastic about homemade smoked salmon, especially if belly meat is involved. 

†† Entirely unintelligible to modern English speakers. 

Foodie? Some Words About Nomenclature

Danse Macabre: The Foodie copyright 2010, 2011 Dylan Meconis

I love food.  I pretty much love all food barring some finicks about texture, and the odd histamine reaction.  I unapologeticly love pot pies from the freezer section, and I love the fads of trendy cuisine. One of the best moments when I was home in Alaska came while having lunch with some friends at a favorite restaurant.*  Kinley's is one of those trendy places where your side salad comes with goat cheese, and your fried chicken sandwich comes slathered in the house sour cherry preserves.**  JVW had ordered the bacon wrapped date appetizer. This is the apotheosis of dates -- dates should always be paired up with something savory, lest their sweetness take over whatever one is eating.  It is a favorite.  I bit into one.  The meld of smokey, sweet, and salt with a lemon and garlic in the background to cut through all the richness was perfection. 

For all that, my tastes are not all that abstruse, or so I like to think.  Until, I find myself saying things like, "You know, that would be really good with some goat cheese," when a classmate is talking about making macaroni and cheese. Such a totally trendoid thing to suggest.  My classmate asked me, "Are you one of those foodies?"  Yes, but hopefully without the sour faced snobbery that shows up in the illustration above (which I find hilarious, but that might be the art history classes talking), and in some contemporary food writing.

However in the playful spirit of the best contemporary food, I offer one of my favorite fusion dessert recipes. 

Garam Masala Pumpkin Brownies

Intensely rich, serve in bite size pieces.  These brownies would be absolutely divine with dulce de leche, and bananas on top.  And creme fraiche or chevre.  And pecans.  Maybe bacon too.  You know, trendy things.

3/4 cup butter
2 c brown sugar
1 1/4 c Dutched cocoa
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 T vanilla extract 

3 eggs
1 15 oz can pumpkin
1 1/2 c flour
1 c chocolate chips
1 1/2 coconut

1 tsp cinnamon (I used the Vietnamese)

1/2 tsp garam masala (but check the ingredients, garam masala sometimes includes mustard, which I have yet to like when paired with chocolate.  One could alternatively experiment with pinches of cumin, coriander, clove, cinnamon, fenugreek, and nutmeg or mace -- when the blend tastes right, use 1/2 tsp of the blend.  But for this application, I use the Spice Islands Garam Masala blend.  It's pretty wimpy otherwise, so I only use it for desserts.)

1/2 tsp cayenne, or to taste, or use something milder, or a splash of Tabasco sauce
1/4 tsp ginger

Preheat 350 grease a 13"x9" pan.

Melt butter over low heat (or nuke it, but I never do) and stir in sugar. Return to heat, stirring until the mixture appears smooth and shiny. Transfer to mixing bowl.

Stir in cocoa, salt, baking powder, and spices
.
Blend together eggs, pumpkin, and vanilla. Add to cocoa mixture, beating 'til smooth.

Add flour, chips, and coconut, stirring 'til well combined.

Spoon batter into prepped pan and smooth over. Bake 35 minutes or so, or until a toothpick or fork inserted in the center comes out with only a couple of crumbs clinging to it.

Absolutely delish.

*Anchorage is, slightly inexplicably, one of the better places to eat that I've ever been to.  It's not Rome, but what is?  I theorize that the long cold winters and the constant caloric drain to keep warm have supplied the drive to perfect the nouvelle pizza, and haute diner food.  And beer? I could weep missing the breweries of Anchorage. 
**It is fantastic.  I have wondered ever since why all fried chicken sandwiches don't come with sour cherry preserves.